New study claims life supporting oxygen possible on Mars
According to a study, there may be sufficient oxygen for microorganisms in the reserves of saline water under the surface of Mars. This is exactly the opposite of the current view of the possibility of life on this red planet. Researchers say that the findings of the new study can set a better goal for the rover sent to find signs of suitable conditions for the past or present of the planet on Mars.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology’s team of scientists had an estimate that if there is liquid water on Mars, then it could be more oxygen than as it was thought earlier.
According to this model, this level of oxygen can be theoretically more than the necessary oxygen to support aerobic life. There was not so much information on the existence of liquid water on Mars. And even before that, researchers had rejected the idea that it would be oxygenated because Mars’s environment is 160 times thinner than the Earth’s environment and it has the most carbon dioxide.
Author of this study, published in Nature Geoscience, and JPL scientist, Vlada Stamenkovich said, “When the life sustainability is calculated for any environment, oxygen is a vital ingredient but it is relatively small on Mars.””Nobody ever thought that the amount of oxygen needed for aerobic respiration could be more than theoretical on Mars” added Vlada. It is one of the biggest goals of NASA’s Mars program. In the recent months, a European spacecraft data showed that the southern pole of Mars could have liquid water under the ice surface.
